Salvage for the Saint (13 page)

“Simon—I thought it was you!” she said weakly.

He nodded grimly.

“So did someone else.”

As they emerged into the street, a small blue van was just moving off some twenty or thirty yards away. In the available light it was impossible to get any view of the driver’s face, but within seconds they were following in the Hirondel.

The driver of the van had just a fraction too much of a start: he made turn after rapid turn, down ever narrower side-streets—a type of driving in which a car the size of the Hirondel could hardly be at its best, even with the formidable skill of a Simon Templar behind the wheel. Inevitably, there came a time when Simon had to come to a screeching halt for a party of inebriates crossing the road just after the van had sped around a corner ahead of them and out of sight; and then they lost it.

Simon drove on for a while, filling the air with half-silent objurgations. All he had left that was worth trying was to continue, not very hopefully, in the same rough general direction the van had taken so far. Working on that admittedly hit-or-miss principle, in due course they emerged into a wider street, a dimly lit dock service road of some kind. He drove on slowly for a minute or two, peering into the pools of darkness on either side. He was about to give it up as a bad job when Arabella suddenly tugged at his sleeve.

“Simon—look!”

He looked where she was pointing. In the light of the half-moon, they could just make out the shape of a small van, parked in a narrow side street alongside a high dock wall.

They got out, and approached the van cautiously. It was blue, and the engine felt warm, but nobody was inside. They looked around, their eyes becoming accustomed to the dark. On one side of the narrow bend was some waste ground strewn with rubble; on the other, the high dock fence, unbroken by any gate or opening, as far as could be seen. Then Simon spotted what might, at a stretch, have been called an opening—just a narrow vertical slot where one plank was missing.

He tested an adjacent plank and found it loose. He took it out, and they squeezed silently through the gap. Once through, they paused on the other side of the fence, listening. Ahead of them, nothing; behind, only a couple of car engines playing their gearbox tunes somewhere on the night air.

Simon led the way as they advanced stealthily down a path which in due course took them to a gap between two warehouse-like buildings. His acute hearing picked up a faint shuffling sound, and what might have been humming, from some distance ahead; and it was because he was concentrating on that more distant sound, and trying to analyse it, that he almost missed the nearer one until it was too late.

Near the gap between the two buildings was a pile of crates, just visible in the moonlight, and it was from the upper area of this heap of crates that the scraping, creaking sound came. A half second later, a huge crate came crashing down, almost on top of him. It was only that preliminary creaking, as the crate teetered on the brink before it fell, that saved him. It gave him the split second that was all his highly tuned reflexes needed, and he sprang back, and suffered nothing worse than a bruised toe as the big crate jarred against his foot on its way down.

For long moments the Saint stood stock still, and Arabella did likewise, while they listened for any sound following that tremendous crash. But they heard nothing from the immediate vicinity—only, from time to time, the strange shuffling and humming, or crooning, from some distance ahead, that Simon had heard before.

They went on warily, skirting the fallen crate, then passing between the buildings and circumnavigating various pieces of heavy marine equipment and fittings. The sounds were louder now, and there could be no doubt that the crooning, or babbling, was human. It was therefore no real surprise when, a little while after, as they neared a dark corrugated iron fence, the shuffling materialised out of the darkness as a man-shaped apparition that sang, if that is the word:

“Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral,

“Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loi-ee,

“Too-Ra-Loo-La … Roo-Ra …

Roora … “

The confused singing trailed off into muttered unintelligible cursing as the man came to a shambling halt at the corrugated iron fence. For a minute or so he seemed at a loss to know what to make of the obstacle. Then a brilliant idea seemed to strike him, and he steadied himself against the fence with one hand while the other fumbled with something that jangled like a bunch of keys, that defeated his befuddled fingers for another minute or so. Then he apparently managed to select a key and, after further painfully protracted endeavours, opened a flush-fitting door in the fence. He lurched through, with the Saint and Arabella following at a distance. They saw him pause and take a long swig from a king-sized hip-flask. There followed an audible smacking of the lips, after which the slurred travesty of singing was resumed.

Ooh-ver in …Kill-llarney,

Many-y yea-rrs a-gooh,

Me moddh-horr sang dhis …

As the man stumbled on into the gloom, Simon and Arabella both pulled up dead at the same instant.

There on the left, looming above them, were the gleaming white bows of a luxury yacht. Even in that limited moonlight, the large gilt lettering of the name on her bow was unmistakable.

It was the Phoenix.

“Dry dock!” Simon said softly. “No wonder we couldn’t find her!”

“But she’s beautiful!” Arabella exclaimed in wonderment. There was a sudden rustle of sound behind them, and the Saint whirled as Inspector Lebec stepped through the doorway in the fence.

“She is indeed beautiful,” he agreed crisply. “But it may be many years, unfortunately, before either of you will be at liberty to enjoy her. Which should at least put an end to the activities of Monsieur Simon Templar!”

Lebec had an automatic levelled, and the two detectives who followed close behind him were similarly equipped, and appeared similarly in earnest.

“Hands raised!” Lebec commanded tautly. “Up! Behind the neck!”

They complied slowly, Simon sighing in-audibly as he did so at Lebec’s having so quickly lived up to his earlier promised nuisance value.

“May I enquire, Inspector,” he asked lazily, “what crime we are supposed to have committed? Is my car parked on a blue line, perhaps?”

“You are both under arrest for the murder of a police officer at the Club Bidou one half hour ago,” said Inspector Lebec.

-3-

The Marseille police headquarters building in those days was a monolithic greystone structure of undistinguished frontage. From the outside, the cells could be identified from their windows, which were smaller than the others and fitted with bars in the time-honoured fashion. There was, in short, nothing outwardly remarkable about the building, as police headquarters go. Nevertheless it had just earned a coveted distinction which few other such establishments had yet managed to achieve, despite keen international competition for the honour.

One of its cells had just housed Simon Templar overnight.

It was a point of pride with the Saint, as well as a mark of his care, foresight and resourcefulness, that he had never yet been convicted of any criminal offence in any country. Over the years, he had grown used to the efforts of zealous and overzealous policemen, most of whom dreamed of rectifying the omission and yearned obsessively to shut the notorious Saint away behind bars for a good long stretch. Every so often, one would manage to detain him for a while on some tenuous ground which owed more to desperate policemanly optimism than to any hard evidence of law-breaking on the part of the Saint. That Simon Templar frequently broke the law is, in a chronicle of strict truth, undeniable; but the circumstances in which he broke it, and his choice of victims upon whom to visit his sometimes violent notions of poetic justice, were such that no hard evidence could be mustered as a basis for holding him.

However, there were admittedly times when Simon Templar lost patience with the petty authoritarian behavior of some idiotic sergeant or inspector; and those were the occasions when he sometimes yielded to the temptation to pull strings in order to speed up his inevitable release. He had his powerful friends and contacts even in certain police forces around the world. For there had been times, and would continue to be times, when the aims of the Saint and those of the law were not incompatible; and many a police officer had cause to be grateful for Simon Templar’s timely intervention.

One such contact came to mind on this occasion. He was Pierre Duport, a high-ranking officer of the Surete in Nice, whose name was respected in police circles the length of the Riviera. Duport owed him at least a small favour in return for the Saint’s part, two years before, in the affair of a certain Corsican chemist found trussed up like a turkey outside Duport’s office, his shaven head branded indelibly with the descriptive words marchand de stupefiants.

But the Saint had hesitated—knowing Duport’s nocturnal inclinations—to attempt to trace him at two in the morning. Judging from Lebec’s manner, a night in the cells was in any case a certainty, come what might, for both him and Arabella.

In the morning, and before any formal charges had been laid, he had no hesitation in claiming his right to a telephone call and in using it to make contact with Duport. He outlined the problem tersely, and Duport immediately undertook to telephone Lebec’s superiors and explain to them in the strongest as well as the simplest terms that Monsieur Simon Templar, whatever else he might have done in his unorthodox life, did not kill policemen on such slender acquaintance.

The call must have had its effect; for less than an hour later the two of them were brought before a strangely subdued Lebec.

“I am very sorry your man is dead, Inspector,” Simon told him. “Unfortunately he was wearing a mask identical to mine, and we’re of similar height. Obviously someone thought he was me.”

“Indeed?” Lebec said without conviction. He returned to his previous practice of addressing himself primarily to Arabella. “Whether Monsieur Templar was the target intended, is perhaps open for debate, which I do not propose to enter. It is enough that there is confirmation of your story from several of the other dancers. Nobody observed the stabbing.” Lebec sniffed disdainfully, as if utterly unwilling to be convinced himself by what he was saying. “Therefore, nobody saw who wielded the knife. Therefore, I must release you both.” He bowed slightly to Arabella. “In your case, Madame, it is a pleasure. In the case of Monsieur Templar, a great regret.”

“I love you too, Gerard,” said the Saint.

Lebec got up from his chair and moved around on the desk to sit, less formally, on its edge.

“Madame—a few words of friendly advice. Already you have spent a night in the police cell. I regret any discomfort—which, I suggest, you would not have risked but for travelling with this notorious criminal Templar. Be very careful with this man, Madame. I have told you of the gold robbery—and of the sixth man. Your husband alone knew his identity.”

“Inspector Lebec,” Arabella said loyally. “I think you ought to stop intimating that Simon is that man.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” Simon put in with a brief baring of the teeth. “That’s one I owe you. Don’t let me forget it.”

“But I put it to you, Madame,” Lebec persisted, “that if he is the sixth man, he will be as merciless with you as with the other three survivors who already seek the gold.”

Simon yawned elaborately and twiddled his thumbs.

“May we please go, Inspector? It really is very boring in here. Something to do with the conversation.”

Lebec nodded stiffly and showed them out, though not without repeating his earlier instruction that they were to report to him before leaving Marseille.

There was no need for them to discuss where they were going. Only breakfast might have stood between them and an exploration of the Phoenix; and breakfast, of a kind, they had been given at the police station.

One of Lebec’s men had nervously driven the Hirondel over from the dock area where it had been left, and now the Saint drove back there and found the orthodox entrance to the dry dock where they had seen the Phoenix.

During the drive, he was conscious of some sidelong and quizzical glances from his passenger. Lebec’s words, it seemed, had re-watered the small seed of doubt which had already threatened to burgeon into fullblown mistrust once before, after their first meeting with the Inspector. Arabella was turning over past events in her mind, comparing what she knew of Simon from personal acquaintance—in truth not a great deal—with the scenario Lebec had implied. But Simon said nothing; he knew that Arabella would surface with her own conclusions or questions, or challenges, when she was good and ready, and it would have gained him nothing to have broached the matter again himself there and then.

The Phoenix, to Arabella’s delight, was exactly as they had seen her. If anything she was even more impressive in daylight. She was a beautiful hundred-footer, her hull and superstructure gleaming with new white paint. For a minute or two Arabella just stood and gawped; then she walked up and down and gawped some more from several different angles for another minute or two. There was no one in sight.

“Well,” she said finally, “what are we waiting for? Let’s go aboard.”

There was silence as they crossed a gangway to the main deck. Simon kept his eyes skinned, and his muscles were alert for instant action. He hadn’t forgotten the fugitive of the night before, he who had driven the van; and neither had he forgotten the strange freak of chance—if that was what it was—that had caused a crate to fall at the very instant when he was about to walk under it.

There was no sign of anyone on deck. They opened the door to the main saloon and went in. It was lavishly appointed, with heavy ornate furniture and an apparently well-stocked bar; but dominating the room was a hugh oil painting on the far wall, a portrait of the familiar face of Charles Tatenor—an almost photographic likeness of the man, complete with yachting cap.

“Cha—” Arabella began in an automatic exclamation, but Simon put his finger to his lips warningly. His acute hearing had picked up the faintest susurration from somewhere within the accommodation. He led the way silently through a teak door in the after bulkhead, and then along a short passageway. The noise was louder there, and increased still more as they approached a door marked “Galley” at the end of the passageway.